Kate Hamer: The Girl in the Red Coat

When I lift the receiver I get the feeling I’m just in time, that the caller was about to give up and the line click dead. It’s a terrible line, pops and hisses sound in my ear.

‘Beth?’

‘Yes.’

More whooping noises.

‘It’s Maria. Beth, I need to come and see you, I’ve got —’ Then the whoops chatter so much they drown her out. I shake the receiver in my hand as if I could rattle them to the floor.

‘What is it?’ I shout down the receiver. ‘What have you got?’

Then click, buzz. The line’s gone dead.

‘No, no.’ My voice echoes up the stairs. I put the receiver down then twice it rings again. But it’s worse now and the phone’s been colonised by evil mocking noises — half electric, half ghostly — so they’re all I can hear.

For a moment I stand frozen. A fantasy pops in my head — unwanted, unbidden — of the phone ringing and a voice asking: ‘Mum? Mum, is that you? I’m coming back to you now. I’m getting closer, Mum. Mum, Mum, Mum, Mum.’

Maria calls back on my mobile and says they’re reviewing the case and will be out to see me. ‘Your house phone has a life of its own,’ she laughs.

I pace and prowl the sitting room. There’s a feeling of events gathering pace. I tell myself I’ve felt that before; it’s my imagination. The house agrees with me, it’s gone silent now. Sulking under thin cold sunshine.

‘How can you bear staying in that house?’ a friend had asked me once.

‘But how could I ever leave? One day I might open the door and there’ll she be,’ I’d replied.

But the next morning there’s a sour taste of whisky in my mouth when I wake up on the sofa. Something I haven’t had for a long time. The armrest’s bent my head back so it feels sore and stiff. I feel dull, flat. It’s probably nothing, like the rest of it. See, this is how I got here. Over the years, slowly, slowly. Signs and clues emerging like seals’ heads among the waves only to disappear again, leaving me scanning the horizon. The first few years: the sightings — Scotland, Belgium, South America. The police tried to weed the craziest ones out but still they came, sometimes thick and fast. Sometimes nothing for weeks on end. The red coat was what people remembered and it was seen everywhere: a special army of red-coated children popping up all over the globe. It became a distraction, one that the police tried to veer away from because who knows what happened to that coat? But long after she’d vanished she was known in the papers as the Girl in the Red Coat.

Of course, every time I reached a state of breathless anxiety. But each time the sightings faded to nothing — it was another little girl, someone else’s child. Or never to be seen again: an apparition that appeared across the world from time to time, like a sighting of the Virgin Mary in the clouds. Paul started a local fund to pay for the private detective. We’re onto something exciting, they’d say, a sighting on a bus in Luxembourg, in Sweden, in Brisbane. Often I’d get letters — Sweetheart, I know where your little girl is. I’ve been a psychic for twenty years and I can see her clear as day. She’s still wearing a red coat.

I’ve had so many false alarms I’m immune to them. But who am I kidding? Coffee gets me wired and awake. Graham calls and I tell him what’s happened.

‘Would you like me to be there?’ he asks. ‘I have a free period.’

I surprise myself by saying, ‘Yes.’

I’m showered and changed and waiting at the window for half an hour before they both end up arriving together. I feel a rush of affection for Maria as I see her coming up the path, the wind tugging at her raincoat. Her hair is cropped close to her head and I get the feeling she couldn’t be bothered with the femininity even of a neat bob any more, and got rid of it once it became a distraction. Graham bends his head and smiles as he says something to her and an unexpected wave of tenderness for him leaves me almost gasping.

‘Beth, how lovely to see you,’ she says. Close up, she looks older, of course. But something else too. She’s given in to her serious nature. Funny how if you don’t see someone for a while you can observe how their character and their daily thoughts have seeped into their bones, sunk into their muscles.

She sits on the edge of the sofa. ‘How are you, Beth? You’re looking well.’

‘My job keeps me going these days. I don’t know what I’d do without it.’

‘That’s good. Listen, it’s mainly a review but I won’t beat about the bush because I know you’ll be anxious about this. It’s a slim chance and I don’t want to get your hopes up.’

I smile; the platitudes haven’t changed. I’ve grown to like them. She uses them because she’s not confident about forming her own words, I can see that now.

‘Of course.’

She takes a folder out of her case, the plastic kind with a zip all the way round it. There’s a photo inside, blown up to A4. Graham perches on the arm of my chair and puts his hand on my shoulder.

‘I want you to take a look at this and see what you think.’

It’s the face of a girl. Her head’s half turned from the camera, revealing one eye. There’s a look in it I can’t quite fathom, or put my finger on. A clump of hair, curled in a loose corkscrew, blows across her face. It’s shadowy, taken from a distance.

A terrible pain grips my stomach, sudden, unexpected. It makes me cry out.

Maria is by my side in a flash. ‘Beth, what is it? I’m so sorry if this is upsetting you …’

She’s crouching down on the floor, looking up, and her face is full of concern.

‘It’s her.’

‘Now then, we can’t be so sure. We’ve done a computer model from a photo you gave us. It seems to match, but honestly, Beth, we can’t be sure. The hair in the way, the coat collar on the other side. It stops us measuring the jaw …’

I’m gripping the photo so hard it’s shaking and Maria gently prises it from my fingers.

‘Where was this taken?’ I reach up for Graham’s hand and his strong slender fingers weave with mine.

Maria’s back on the sofa now. She’s worried, I can see, worried she’s taken this too far, too soon.

‘It’s a group of drifters in America. The police there took photos of them, a good few years ago now, before they moved them on. They’ve got a database and a friend of mine’s been working out there. They’d forgotten to stop her access to the database so she does a trawl now and then. Just looking, really. I guess we’re a nosy bunch by trade. When she saw this she called me up.’

‘Oh God, let me see again.’

She lets me have the photo but she’s reluctant now. I sense it in the way she hands it over. The photo’s black and white so I can’t see the hair colour. But it’s better like this; you can see the bare bones of a face. I put my finger onto the cheek in the photo. I’m not so sure now. Is my memory of her fading? The idea is terrible.

‘She’s lovely.’

‘Yes, Beth. She is.’

‘What else? What else can they tell you?’ I’m frantic now; I need to calm down to show her she can pursue this without me falling to pieces.

‘Not much. I’ve spoken to the policeman who took the photo. It was in the southern states and they were camping illegally. He thought they might be gypsies, or Mexicans without visas. It was a couple of years ago now so his memory’s a bit hazy. He remembers the girl because she didn’t seem quite the same as the rest of them. But the next day they were gone and I suppose for him it was problem solved.’

‘Why did he take photos?’

‘I guess it’s a bit … well, it’s a tactic I suppose.’

‘What, to intimidate them?’ Already I want to protect this girl.